

INDUSTRIES 



time. The spinners were to have a penny for 

 every seven knots without deductions, and the 

 weavers a shilling per pound weight for weaving 

 white says, with a deduction of sixpence per 

 piece in says weighing over 5 Ib. 1 The task of 

 raising wages all over the country was probably 

 found to be beyond the powers of the Privy 

 Council. 



In this connexion may be given an assessment 

 of wages for the cloth industry of Suffolk made 

 by the justices at Bury in 1630 and applying to 

 both the old and the new draperies : 



Clothiers' chief servants using to ride to spinners, with 



livery 3, without 4. 



Other servants of clothiers, with livery 40^., with- 

 out 50^. 

 Servants to weavers of woollen cloth or stuff, with 



livery 30*., without 40*. 



Manservants to woolcombers, paid by the year 40^. 

 Manservants to woolcombers working by the pound, 



single men \d. a Ib. 

 Manservants to woolcombers working by the pound, 



married, having served apprentice, z</. 

 Chief servants of fullers, with livery }, without 



5 marks. 



Chief servants of millers, with livery 5O/., without 3. 

 Other servants of fullers and millers, with livery 4O/., 



without 5o/. 



Chief servants of dyers, with livery 5o/., without $. 

 Other servants of dyers, with livery 40*., without 5O/. 

 Chief servants of tuckers, shearmen, hosiers, with 



livery \6s. 8<z"., without 53/. \d' 



After the Restoration, when the new draperies 

 were rapidly supplanting the old, the ancient 

 borough of Sudbury with the neighbouring 

 village of Long Melford became the chief centre 

 of the Suffolk cloth industry, and the records of 

 Sudbury show that the weavers there were able 

 to use the machinery of municipal government in 

 defence of their status. The oath administered 

 to the surveyor of weavers on the day of the 

 election of the mayor in 1665 was as follows : 



You shall swear that you will make diligent search 

 for the finding out of all such clothiers or saymakers 

 as shall use more than two broad looms or three say 

 looms or narrow looms within this town, and of all 

 such weavers as shall use above the number of two 

 broad looms or five say looms or narrow looms, and 

 of all such clothiers or weavers or other artificer in- 

 habitants as shall take ... as an apprentice the son 

 of any husbandman or labourer inhabiting within 

 this town or elsewhere, unless such apprentice shall be 

 bound by the churchwardens or overseers of the poor 

 with the consent of the mayor for seven years. And 

 that no clothier shall take three apprentices except he 

 keep one journeyman. 5 



In 1674, when the clothiers in many counties 

 united in petitioning against the grant of licences 

 for the export of wool, fuller's earth, and undyed 



1 P.C. R. 16 Feb. 1631, and S.P. Dom.Chas. I, 

 clxxxix, 40 ; ibid, cxcvii, 72. 

 ' Eng. Hist. Rev. 1897, p. 307. 

 * Journ. Stiff". Arch. last, viii, if. 



cloth and stuffs, the complaints from Suffolk 

 were especially numerous and amounted to nearly 

 a hundred, but their numbers cannot be taken 

 as an indication of prosperity. 4 In the latter 

 half of the seventeenth century the light fabrics, 

 calicoes and silks brought in by the East India 

 Company were coming into general use, and the 

 competition was complained of not only by the 

 silkweavers, but by the manufacturers of the 

 new draperies. The saymakers of Suffolk 

 petitioned Parliament in 1696 for the exclusion 

 of the Indian fabrics. 6 In 1722, when Defoe 

 made his tour of the eastern counties, he found 

 Sudbury remarkable for nothing except for being 

 very populous and very poor. 



They have (he says) a great manufacture of says and 

 perpetuanas and multitudes of poor people are em- 

 ployed in working them ; but the number of the poor 

 is almost ready to eat up the rich. . . . Long Melford 

 .... is full of very good houses, and as they told 

 me is richer and has more wealthy masters of the 

 manufacture in it than in Sudbury itself. 6 



Another traveller thirty years later finds the in- 

 dustry still carried on in Sudbury, Lavenham, 

 Clare, Bildeston, and Hadleigh, but is struck by 

 the poverty and dirt by which it seems to be 

 accompanied. 7 The new draperies were in fact 

 slowly following the old to the west country and 

 to the north. 



As the amount of weaving done in the county 

 diminished, the amount of wool combed and 

 spun for the weavers of other counties increased. 

 The Norwich weavers were the chief con- 

 sumers of the Suffolk yarn, and the powers of 

 search and of forfeiture which had been origin- 

 ally conferred by order in Council, and which 

 were re-granted by Act of Parliament in 1662, 

 were a constant source of dispute. In 1623 the 

 woolcombers of Suffolk and the other eastern 

 counties complained to Parliament that the Nor- 

 wich weavers had, under cover of their powers 

 of search, 'made great havoc and spoil of the said 

 commodities by rifling wagons at their inns and 

 on the road, and by plundering the woolcombers 

 themselves on the road and by breaking open 

 their houses and carrying away what they please.' 

 When a seizure was made, the fine imposed, as 

 to which the master weavers were both judge and 

 jury, instead of being used for the benefit of the 

 poorer weavers, was consumed in treats, whilst 

 the forfeited yarn was sold and made up into 

 cloth. These proceedings did not check the 

 admitted abuses in spinning, as the spinsters were 

 not punished, and the woolcombers therefore 

 asked that they might be incorporated by such 

 methods and under such regulations as the House 

 of Commons might think fit. The House, 



4 S.P. Dom. Chas. II, ccclxi, No. 155. 

 4 Commons 'Journ. xi, 456. 

 * Defoe, Tour in the Eastern Counties, p. 100. 

 ' Universal Mag. (1759), I 7 l ~7- 



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